Interns can often end up just making tea and coffee when they could be contributing to the business. Photograph: Image Source/Corbis

Paying a fair wage to interns in the voluntary sector might seem an unreasonable demand in this period of widespread cuts and redundancies, as most organisations will be looking for no or low cost ways of getting work done. Internships are seen by many as a cost effective way to get work done for free by willing young graduates for a limited period.

They are generally only paid for their travel expenses but in return they get the opportunity to develop their skills, learn a great deal about the organisation and the sector, and develop useful contacts that may help them get paid employment in the future. But there are both practical and ethical reasons why we should stop taking advantage of interns and pay them for the work they do.

The practical reason for paying interns is to do with what is generally required of them and how this may affect their employment status. Karl Wilding recently asked in the voluntary sector network on Twitter whether interns in charities are really volunteering. I think the answer to this is a resounding no, for many if not most interns, and this has implications for how we recruit and support interns in the voluntary sector.

These obligations create an implied employment contract and the rights and responsibilities that go with it. Volunteers, on the other hand, are often asked if they can commit to regular minimum hours but they cannot be obliged to do so, while interns generally can be.

There is very little hard data on how internships operate in the private, public or voluntary sectors, but we can learn something about this from a range of non-representative surveys carried out by organisations such as the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD) and from anecdotal evidence.

We know that most interns are young graduates and that they are offered internships for anything between six weeks to 12 months. They take these opportunities because they provide hands-on experience of a particular sector or profession and enhance their CV. Most interns are required to work full-time and do work that makes a useful contribution to the organisation. Whether the employers regard this as an internship or work experience is irrelevant under employment law.

In cases where an employer's requirements gives an intern an implied contract as a worker then they are entitled to be paid the minimum wage. The evidence and argument for this is made very effectively in Why Interns Need a Fair Wage, a report written jointly by the Institiute for Public Policy Research and Internocracy, the youth-led social enterprise whose purpose is change the culture of internships in the UK.

This brings me to the ethical reasons why our sector should pay a fair wage for internships. It is clear that the only young people who can afford to take internships are those who can rely on financial support from their family. People from low income families are not able to work for free, even for three months, and so are excluded from the valuable experience that internships offer. Moreover, many interns are recruited informally through the sort of personal networks that are much less likely to be accessible to people from low income or minority ethnic backgrounds.

So the lack of both money and access to networks compounds existing social and economic inequalities. Given that so many organisations in the voluntary sector work to overcome social and economic inequality and to improve the lives and opportunities of people and their communities, surely we have an obligation to ensure that internships in our sector are open to young people from all social and financial backgrounds.

And if we do accept our social obligation to remove or lower the barriers to internships, then we will be much more likely to focus on using open and clear recruitment processes. This is essential if we want young people to be offered internships on the basis of talent rather than on financial status or family connections and networks. Useful tools for anyone thinking of offering internships are the Internship Charter developed by the CIPD, and the guide for third sector organisations from Internocracy.

At the very least, those organisations that work to support young people, raise their aspirations or increase their chances of good employment, should commit to paying interns a fair wage. This would make sure that their employment practices match up to their objectives and their purpose and this must be a good thing. Most organisations probably can't afford to do this on their own, but they could share interns with other organisations and split the costs.

Janet Fleming was seconded from the National Council of Voluntary Organisations to help set up a new strategic skills organisation, Skills – Third Sector, where she is currently a director. She is a board member of the Third Sector National Learning Alliance and a trustee of Islington Arts Factory

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